


Canticles of the Inquisition

by lilith_morgana



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-08
Updated: 2015-03-18
Packaged: 2018-03-11 03:24:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 7,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3312119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilith_morgana/pseuds/lilith_morgana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drabbles and ficlets that don't fit into my Inquisition fic-verse. A lot of it written for tumblr prompts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The world still stands

**Author's Note:**

> Comfort ficlet written for myself after finishing Adamant for the first time. Loghain/Elissa Cousland, Cartography-verse compatible.

The little building in the greenest parts of the desert looks deserted in the moonlight but Loghain knows better. For weeks now it has served as a base of sorts. A waterhole in the scorched flats around them. To him and to others who have gained his trust – Marian had stayed there, too, found the place on her own at that.  _I’m good at tracking people down, Loghain. That’s how you survive Kirkwall._  
  
It unsettles an exhaustion bordering on madness, thinking about that. Dying for a cause is all well and proper, especially in times like these, but she had been too young, had meant too much. He exhales and opens the door.  
  
Elissa appears in the dusk, her back turned to the entrance as she goes over something on the table by the window where some moonlight light up a sliver of their surroundings. She sorts through her belongings, he knows. Always after battles that have cost to much, like a ritual counting of things that do not matter, that can be counted without pain and great cost. He’s the same.   
  
At the sound of his entrance she turns, hesitantly. Once she’d have stood facing the doorway until he appeared but these are dark days for all of Thedas and they’ve lost far too much lately to grant themselves that sort of certainty.  
  
“ _Loghain_ ,” she says instead, low and under her breath when she spots him and then again with her mouth warm and damp against his neck. ”I saw parts of the fortress crumble. I knew you were up there.”  
  
And he had known she was down  _there_ , somewhere in the thick of it, fighting without a name for an Order they barely recognise any more.   
  
“Clarel is dead. A lot of Wardens perished.”   
  
“So I heard.” She leans back and releases her tight hold of him somewhat, her eyes darkening. “And Marian?”  
  
Loghain shakes his head. “She didn’t make it. There were… circumstances.”  
  
He is too tired to talk about the fade, too worn down from its trials to allow his mind to wander there. And Elissa knows better than to ask for details; things will have names and explanations when the sound of battle has faded from the hot sand outside, when they have rested for a couple of hours. They will have much to go over. At present, however, they make do with what they have here and now.   
  
Elissa lets out a somewhat unsteady breath. ”Oh. Oh,  _Isabela_.”   
  
”Yes.” He holds her gaze for a moment. Every loss feels heavier these days without the luxury of command and orders, without the comforting distance of military hierarchy. Every death is the death of an equal. It can drive you mad if you let it, so they don’t.   
  
Instead they share a meal made up of food stolen from the Inquisition’s forces, of fruit bought from the merchants who cannot afford to flee, wine from that abandoned camp in the oasis. Many Wardens have testified that the calling inside their minds seem to burn their bodies from within, causing them to be ever hungry, ever dissatisfied. Loghain doesn’t feel that particular side effect but he eats until there’s no more food on their plates and Elissa leans back in her chair, watching him across the table.   
  
Later, as dawn begins to bleed into the darkness and his body has settled after all the fighting, Loghain lies down beside her in the narrow bed - made for bloody elves, she complains in his memory – and slides one arm around her waist, unable to banish the Fade now, this close to sleep. The fear and confusion of it, the slithering sounds of the demon tearing apart his thoughts and putting them back together, how easy it had been to give it right. Then he thinks of his daughter and this woman beside him in bed, a warm body full of stubborn, burning proof that not everything in his life is a ruin, that not everything he leaves behind will be a legacy of failure.   
  
”I  _love_  you.” He is so close to her face that his nose touches her cheek and he can feel her smile at his words. He does not say it enough, barely says it at all but he says it now. Says it again as Elissa turns her head slightly, a soft smile on her lips.   
  
“Whatever  _happened_  tonight?”

Loghain shakes his head, taking a deep breath to inhale her scent, force out the chaos with that slow-burning fire he still feels whenever he’s near her.   
  
“The world still stands tomorrow,” he mutters as his hand travel over her stomach and hips, mapping out familiar territory that can never become familiar  _enough_ , never something he dares to take for granted. “We can talk more then.”  
  
“What an optimist you have become.” Elissa’s hands are on his chest now, in his hair – she had cut it for him before they left Ferelden last time as though it had marked something, he is not certain what – at the back of his neck. Her voice is thick, curved around a thousand losses and uncertainties, and her touch is firm.   
  
“All your doing of course.”  
  
She laughs a little at that, opening her mouth and adjusting herself under his weight.   
  
“Of course,” she mumbles into their kiss.   
  
Then they sleep, better than they have any right to, while the scorching sun outside beats down on the scenes of battle and the lands of raging war.


	2. Grand Tourney

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [harding-hightown's](http://harding-hightown.tumblr.com/) prompt.

They say you never forget your first Grand Tourney.   
  
Thom tells a woman this as he stands by a merchant that serves wine from Antiva and dark liquor from Nevarra and he can’t quite recall if he’s had both or if it’s just the wine that has spread into his blood, rendering him happier than he can ever remember being before. His hands still ache, his back is stiff and sore and the cut that rests under a temporary dressing on his right arm smarts like shit, but he’s fucking  _happy_. There’s a song in his head, sung to the beats and the power of the crowds and the smells from all the food and the wine and the people swirling around his thoughts until it makes them feel so light, like nothing else matters.   
  
Leaning closer, he tells the woman this.   
  
She’s a tall woman, stocky like a soldier and fat like a serving wench and there’s something to be said about that combination, he thinks as her gaze meets his over the bottles. He isn’t certain she’s pretty - in fact he doubts she is - though she’s got marvellous tits and a plump arse that makes him want to drag her off somewhere private and do dirty, celebratory things. Not for the first time since he became a man grown he wonders how he’d suggest something like that without sounding like a complete bastard. The commoner girls in Markham are different, simpler, they’ll  _show_  what they like and there’s no need for fancy words. This lady wears fucking  _silk_ and gold; he can’t feel her up and wait for a slap or a giggle.   
  
“My name’s Thomas,” he says instead, going with his last minute decision that Thomas sounds more grow-up. No one’s ever called him that.   
  
“You won the melee.” She isn’t  _asking_  and the statement lands like a blow in his gut, hot and proud and fierce like the fights he’s just endured. Her voice is careful and slow,  _deliberate_.

“You watched?” His words come off as questions regardless of his intentions, betraying him as they slip out of his mouth.   
  
She smiles at that and there are tiny wrinkles around her eyes and mouth, soft like spider’s web. Somehow it makes her face more appealing, as though he could watch it for a long time and still discover something new.   
  
“I saw you win, yes.”   
  
They talk about the melee and about Chevaliers, about war and politics – which he knows nothing about and merely nod at whatever the fuck she’s saying – and then, as the wine burns stronger he tries to kiss her. It’s how it goes, how he’s  _used_  to things being: a girl stays in his company, stays without laughing at him or finding him a boring oaf or a  _useless Rainier, you lot are good for nothing_ , he kisses her or she kisses him and matters are settled.

“Being a brute suits you badly, dear.” The lady whispers in his ear, her hand still firm around his chin, the notion of that hand pushing him away still hanging in the air between them. “You have such gentle eyes.”  
  
“You don’t know me, my lady.” He feels his cheeks flush warm and red with wounded pride and wants to get out of here, go look for another woman,  _any_ woman. He won the damn melee, he could bed someone younger and prettier down by the dancing crowd or -   
  
Her thumb runs over his lower lip suddenly and his thoughts scatter.   
  
“I will, soon.”  
  
“Is that so?  
  
She smiles again, letting go of his chin. He wonders if there will be a mark to go with his other tournament scars and bruises. “I believe it is. Tell me, are you as good with your tongue as you are with those hands?”  
  
Thom raises an eyebrow. “My tongue?”  
  
"Yes, Thomas." His name sounds deliciously, impossibly filthy in her mouth and he forgets all about his embarrassment and awkward misstep because she leans forward, deep enough for him to get a better glimpse at her breasts beneath the layers of silk and there’s nothing quite as important as that, at least not for now. "Don’t worry, I will show you."  
  
They say you never forget your first Grand Tourney.


	3. Gentle souls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For [ysellatrevelyan](http://ysellatrevelyan.tumblr.com/) who wanted a drabble about Cole adopting a nug.

Nugs have gentle souls, like their skin. Simple thoughts, happy thoughts, hearts that thump-thump-thump lightly as the bodies run. He likes to watch them run. Wants to keep them safe from the bears, thump-thump-thump in the grass. Varric says most people are like cats but Cole thinks most people should be like nugs.   
  
“Where are you going to keep it?” The Inquisitor talks like a cat, but she’s a lion. She had not wanted him to take the nug back to the castle.  _'Will it be a bear cub next time, why did I say yes, maybe Vivienne is right'._    
  
“Can it live in the stables? It likes horses.”   
  
She chuckles. “You’ll have to ask Master Dennet yourself, Cole. Good luck with that.”  
  
Cole lifts the animal into his lap, stroking the ears and the little nose. Simple thoughts, happy thoughts, strange little bodies not built for anywhere, too cold for cold, too hot for heat, meant for the dark.   
  
He won’t ask Horsemaster Dennet, but he doesn’t say that. He will ask Thom, the man with the secret name, so secret the Inquisitor doesn’t even know. Cole doesn’t say that either. It doesn’t matter. She thinks he’s a bear or a dog but in his heart he’s a wolf and he’ll let the nug stay with the horses, he’ll understand why it has to.  


	4. Nevarra

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After reading chapter 15 of There are names for what binds us, [thievinghippo](http://thievinghippo.tumblr.com/) wanted to know how young Thom ended up half naked on a ship to Nevarra.

There’s an ocean in his head. A hissing, bottomless sound of water right by his ear and he blinks, suddenly realising he’s  _freezing_  and that his skin feels numb, as if he’s been outside for hours.  _Has_  he been outside for hours? He winces and sits up with some effort, trying to stop the world from tilting to the side, except it doesn’t because the fucking  _world_  tilts to the side and it’s not until he sees the water spread out in front of him that he realises it’s because he’s on a bloody  _ship_.   
  
“Maker’s balls,” he mutters.   
  
He hears a low, hoarse laugh beside him and for a heartbeat he’s ready to attack, but when his gaze wanders in the direction of the sound he spots a dwarf lady. Unarmed and half naked, just like him.   
  
 _Fuck_.   
  
“Uh…” Thom rubs his forehead – where a massive, helmet-shaped headache begins to form – and narrows his eyes in the cruel morning light. “Did we…?”  
  
She laughs again. “We  _tried_.”  
  
“Right.” He feels a distinct need to find his clothes but their surroundings give him no hope. “Sorry about that.”  
  
The girl shrugs. “Hey, I was the one who convinced you to drink that Qunari piss. Great warriors. Useless for everything else. Well.  _Almost_  everything else.”  
  
“And how did we end up here?” He nods towards the water.   
  
“You wanted to join the Carta.” Now her grin is decidedly wicked and he probably ought to be scared but all he can think about is how her mouth curls around her words, how her eyes glitter and how her tits almost fall out of the open shirt –  _his_  open shirt, he realises – when she leans forward. “Told you my next job was in Nevarra so you found a ship.”  
  
“The  _Carta_?” he repeats but his heart’s not in it and she raises an eyebrow as she spots his gaze travelling over her hips and arse. He knows it’s a crime syndicate and he knows it’s bad but most of the things he stumble across these days are fairly shit so it’s nothing earth-shattering about this.   
  
“The Carta.” She stretches a little, making the deliciously line of her neck seem even more distracting. “Of course, I tried to tell you it was just a joke and I’m a sodding blacksmith but you had stopped listening by then.”  
  
The relief makes him grin, too. “Why did I stop listening?”  
  
“No idea.” Her body is closer now and it seems small, but her arms are strong and thick and her hands firm on his shoulders. When their eyes meet her gaze is full of humour and confidence and he finds that he has very little armour against that. “So how about you try not to fall asleep this time?”  
  
She tastes of salt and ale and Thom kisses her before he has time to regret it, time to think about Nevarra and how he’ll get away from there with no coin but he decides as the girl – he probably should know her name, it seems rude not to – curls her fingers into the hair on his chest and pulls him down over her that he’ll have plenty of opportunity to worry about that later.   
  
Around them the Waking Sea keeps hissing, drowning out the sound of everything else. 


	5. These old bones of war

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My guilty pleasure Blackwall ship summed up in around 1000 words.

"Furrows." Iron Bull slumps down so fast on the chair that the wood creaks beneath his weight. "Nice fight today."

They have been underground for the better part of two days, searching forred lyrium sources without finding anything but large hordes of darkspawn nesting all over the coast. Thom feels a heavy sort of exhaustion in his bones, the kind where nothing helps but to rest. It’s not merely darkspawn and lack of sunlight, of course, it’s the uninterrupted string of days between that prison cell in Val Royeaux and Skyhold’s tavern tonight, the  _unrest_  in them all, the stark light of truth. It makes people want to  _talk_. He still finds that he has very few words for it so he prefers not to, prefers the company of those who can decipher the unspoken.

"Furrows, huh?" Varric says, in passing, gone before Thom has even thought of a reply. He’s too slow tonight, stuck in a sluggish sort of mood. "I could work with that."

Thom sighs. “Can’t a man think around here without being judged for it?”

The qunari leans forward, elbows on the table and a tankard in his hand. He grins, which is an expression that usually looks quite feral but with alcohol subduing his edges and the comfortable atmosphere of the nearly-full tavern around them, Thom finds him far less reminiscent of a wild animal and more… he doesn’t know what the fuck the word is for it and he’s not certain he wants to. Approachable? Appealing?  _Maker’s fucking balls, Rainier._

"I’m not judging. I’m jealous. I can’t pull that off."

Almost despite himself, Thom smirks. “A  _tragedy_  for sure.”

There’s a gleam in Bull’s eye that Thom catches –  _hard_  - like he catches the effects of the last wine in his cup. A fine, rich flavour from Val Chevin, as it happens, temporarily available as a direct result of the Inquisitor and the Lady Ambassador assisting some old crook in Orlais. Andraste help him, he misses Orlais sometimes. As much as he hates the place, he certainly loves it too.

"If you’re going to brood, you might as well reap the benefits," Bull says, decidedly amused by the topic and with that slight edge to his voice that means he’s searching for something more, digging deeper.  _Never trust a Qunari_ , someone told him once, back when he was first sent outside the Orlesian border.  _Let alone a Ben-Hassrath_.

"And what are those benefits?" he asks, even if he knows the answer already. It’s always the same: drinking or fucking. He wonders how much of it that’s genuine and how much that belongs to the person he’s created in order to perform his job; he wonders if Bull even knows. Lies come easy for some and he’s willing to bet the man in front of him is one of those. He’s also willing to bet the man in front of him is damn well pleased with himself and his downtime activities.  

"The ladies, of course." He grunts a little and leans back again, emptying his drink.

It’s interesting to watch him, Thom thinks. For all his excessive eating, drinking and the habit of joyfully bedding anyone willing, he’s a downright study in self-control, in boundaries and keeping the demons of true temptation at bay. There’s fear in that control, travelling deep inwards. The fear of yourself, of the walls inside your own mind. Thom knows it well from himself and others, knows the prize and weight of it, the  _release_  when you can find some escape -  _any_  escape.   
  
He shifts position slightly, stretches out his legs underneath the table. The fresh wound – courtesy of a genlock axe – on his thigh still aches and he makes a mental note to have it cleaned and dressed again later.   
  
Clawing at the surface of his memory is the vision of those darkspawn fights, that particular dread in fighting in a dank cave where you can barely see your next step, hardly forestall your enemy’s moves and then the rush of it all, the power thrumming through your veins and down your back as you gut the bastards, control the battle. To have the fight flow through you. Just four of them, four warriors trapped among the stone and the ugly creatures living there and he can almost  _taste_  the thrill in his mouth even now, swirling darkly among the wine and that strange fucking sensation of being  _teased_  by this qunari and the even stranger notion of enjoying it.

"Why don’t we hit a few more bottles instead, eh?" Thom plants his hands on the table, getting ready to stand up and order.

“Instead of the  _ladies_? Hey, no problem, big guy.” Bull grins, yet another sort of grin now: broad and confident and  _unsettling_  as he rises as abruptly as he sat down earlier, waving at one of the serving girls who arrives after no more than a brief moment. Thom wonders if she’s a member of the ever-growing crowd of serving girls that the famous Iron Bull has shared his personal quarters with. Wonders, too, why he wonders that.  _Damn_   _the_   _man_. “I’m not the one with all these narrow preferences. You humans are funny that way.”

_Clearly you’ve never been a soldier in the Orlesian army_ , Thom thinks but doesn’t say. He feels drunk enough to still be somewhat out of depth, to keep a tight hold of those limits around his own existence since those limits have a habit of crumbling. He’s always been a weak bastard. 

"You’re telling me you don’t have preferences?" he asks as soon as there’s fresh wine in his cup. At the Inquisitor’s table, Dorian seems to tell an enchanting tale because everyone stares at him, wide-eyed. Thom couldn’t be less interested even if he made an effort.

Bull shrugs, like a ripple through the air. “Sure have. I like  _pretty_.”

Thom shakes his head, grinning into his cup. “Like Dawnstone.”  
  
“Yeah.” Bull laughs. “Kind of like that.”


	6. dressing wounds

"Allow me?"

He looks up from the painful work of trying to dress a wound on his shoulder, half-dressed and using his left hand which is entirely too much like fumbling in the dark. The Lady Inquisitor stands in the tent, fast approaching him as she kneels down by his side. The prominent scar on the left side of her face looks different this close, he thinks, wondering if it bothers her. She doesn’t strike him as the sort of woman who’d let a blemish like that gnaw at her confidence - or a woman who ever gets defined by her looks, for that matter - but then again he knows sod all about women like this one. 

There’s a flicker of something crossing her face, as though she can read his mind. He’s struck by an urge to say something, apologise for his thoughts, but manages to keep his mouth shut.

"If you insist," he says instead, handing the ointment and the bandages to her.

"I do." That tone again, low and under her breath and oddly amused. He doesn’t hear it much, not around the others and never in Haven where she is all poised orders and incessant inquiries about every step anyone ever takes but he hears it here and he grants himself the brief pleasure in thinking it’s because she feels at ease with him. Maker knows why she would, but there you go.

Her hands are large and broad, much like his own but far gentler. As they run softly over his skin he tilts his head back somewhat, to avoid looking at her. She’s used to this scenario, he can tell by her swiftness and ease, and he has no intention of letting her understand that none of this is familiar to him any more, that he cannot even remember the last time someone touched him or if he can he has denied himself that memory, that his loneliness is branded into his bones like a disease. His lives lend themselves badly to smalltalk.

"You’re one of the best fighters I’ve ever seen," she says suddenly, her thumb just around the edge of his wound where his muscles feel sore and brittle like the first ice of the winter. Her green eyes are clear and focused, full of that light he has such a hard time not feeling drawn to.

"Is that so?" He makes a low grunt to cover up the flush of foolish pride at her words, averting his gaze again. Seems he’ll never outrun that wretched pride of his. "You flatter me."

She shrugs. “It’s an observation.”

The noises from their camp bleed into the tent, the sound of metal and horses and wild animals creating a backdrop that can’t distract him at all, not from this. It’s a dull, heavy worry in his blood that he has such a difficult time tearing his thoughts away from her, that he has slipped so far into this tangled mess of connections and alliances. For a good cause, he repeats to himself but he’s never been a good enough liar to convince himself of anything. If he had, maybe he would have ended up different.

"Your own skills are very impressive," he says, causing her to smile slightly. ”I’ve rarely seen such speed from someone wielding a greatsword.”

Another shrug. “It’s what I’ve been trained to do.”

"Not what you wanted to do?" He finds himself asking more questions in her company than ever before in his life, as though his wretched mind is intent on digging a deeper hole for him to be buried in, increasing his chances of being completely sodding caught one of these days. But it’s that glint in her eyes when he asks, that spark of something, a greed mirroring his own. It’s the way her mouth softens when she responds. 

"Not exactly no." She ties a knot on the side of his arm, checking the dressing once more to see if it’s tight enough. It is, he can feel the blood in the area hammer through his veins. Then he can feel her palm pressing lightly against the wound again, almost caressing him. "How does it feel?"

"Like a wound." Blackwall nods, slipping his arm back inside his tunic before catching hold of his own lack of manners. "Thank you"

She smiles, one of those precious rare smiles that he is certain she doesn’t know the power of. If she did, she would be more careful than wasting them on him.   
  
  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
  
“You’re still in pain.” Blackwall’s hand is firm around her arm, steering her away from the desk and her ever-growing pile of duties to be done, tasks to perform, requisitions to look over and worlds to uphold. “Come.  _Sit_.”  
  
She winces as his other hand lightly touch the latest injury on her back, right between her shoulder blades. A dragon, of all creatures. Dragon fire, it turns out, burns flesh until your bones show and then some more. Sleeping is difficult but she doesn’t sleep a lot these days as it is. The wound doesn’t need to be blamed for that.   
  
“I just had it tended to,” she protests vaguely.   
  
“That was yesterday,” he says pointedly.   
  
“Oh.” She frowns, turning her head to look him in the eyes.   
  
He scrutinises her for a moment and his gaze is troubled though it’s impossible to say if it’s clouded by worry for her or for him or for something else entirely.  _You carry the bodies to remember,_  Cole had told him the other day. She had overheard, had seen his face then and felt  _overwhelmed_ , in the same way as she had in that prison cell in Val Royaux. Their lives are weighed down by so much; she supposes it’s merely a matter of balancing the burdens, measuring their value.   
  
As she removes her tunic her skin feels too bare for a moment, too exposed. His hands are warm but hesitant on her skin, nothing like she remembers them and it stings at the back of her mind, blends with anger and confusion and disgust and every time she looks at him she can see it reflected in his face. How in the Maker’s name do you love someone who hates himself, who only lives because you deemed him worthy of it? The earth shatters as her thoughts brush over the matter, the weight suddenly enough to crush them both. When she turns her head now he stops, leaving her skin cold again. She is too tired for masks, her thoughts like letters on her skin.   
  
“I can get a healer for you instead,” he says, quietly.   
  
 _Thom_. She doesn’t call him that, doesn’t know if she ever wants to. It rather depends on who he turns out to be, she thinks, or who he once was.  _An ungrateful little shit,_  Blackwall spits in her memory.  _Arrogant and prideful._ But men are not born like that and there are no simple truths. Even under a different title he had been many things, many versions of himself. The man who sits with Sera in the tavern at night, spinning crude tales that Evelyn doesn’t even want to hear. The man who teaches farmers in the countryside how to hold a sword so they’ll at least stand a chance against the enemy. The man who knows everything about soldiers, about war, but so very little about himself because he has never considered himself important enough to get to know.   
  
And here she is, too. The Herald of the Inquisition. The stupid, accident-prone fool who just had to burst into that locked chamber at the temple, not out of selfless honour but because she had thought  _Andraste’s ass what are they shouting about_. Lady Trevelyan who got expelled from her templar training for disobedience, who got expelled from the university for failing every single test they gave her.   
  
“No.” She shakes her head. “I want you to do it.”  
  
And for a moment, when his touch heat up her skin again and she can feel his breaths against her still-aching injury, soft and lingering like ghosts, everything feels simple enough. 


	7. Dark and stormy night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For [ climbthatblackwall](http://climbthatblackwall.tumblr.com/) who wanted something around the opening line "it was a dark and stormy night"

This was brought to you by, uh, too much Blackwall fanart and the song “Twist” by Goldfrapp.  _Put your dirty angel face between my legs and knicker lace_ , indeed.   
  
  
*  
*  
*  
  


It is a dark and stormy night and it makes the rest of the world seem quiet, less intrusive.

She needs it tonight, craves it after too many nights spent in camps around Sahrnia with thoughts that are anything but warm and light, anything but peaceful. After Halamshiral and then Val Royeaux her life has seemed to take turns that are too sudden, too abrupt for her to entirely catch her breath between the twists and knots in the road.

But they’re here now, she reminds herself as she watches Thom poke around in the fireplace, adding more wood. Both of them are  _here_  and there are so many things that need to be said between them, a long, taut thread of issues to be solved and problems to be addressed but she’d asked him to be here tonight and he had walked up the stairs with badly masked doubt in his eyes, as though he doesn’t want to acknowledge the unspoken either.  _I need some time_ , she had told him after his trial. She had seen relief in him then, seen a familiarity with running away that she knows from her own heart, buried deep beneath these fancy speeches of greater good. She is not certain when that time has passed or what it will mean. If they will be brave enough for it.

He returns to her side when the fire sparks wilder again, the flames rising; he sits down beside her on the divan and she pushes every scrap of duty and necessity out of reach when he looks at her like that, wavering, as though he’s a stranger in his own body now. She wants to tell him about Blackwall, how he had always been just a dream, an ideal, but she can’t find words that don’t seem ridiculous or banal and he’s Captain Thom Rainier - there’s such a distance in that name, a cold, hard shell around it.

"You were injured," he says suddenly and it’s not Captain Thom Rainier’s voice but  _Thom’s_ , low and gruff and tender. His hand pauses mid-air on its way to the most recent scar on her chin, she assumes. It’s not even a scar yet, the dagger had left a deep, infected wound.

"It’s barely a scratch." She tilts her head so he can trace the mark if he wants to – Maker, she  _wants_  him to - and wonders suddenly if he’s used to different kinds of women. Orlesian ladies with their jewels and their coiffures, making love - or what passes as love - as careful and composed as they make every other move in their grand schemes; Marcher women from the cities, wild and attractive and bursting with tricks up their sleeves; Nevarran girls, made of delicious treats wrapped in a free, adventurous spirits. She wonders where  _she_ fits, where he places her, what he makes of her.

"What happened?"

The decision to let him stay behind in Skyhold had been quick and based on gut-feeling, that raw anger that had lingered and refused to loosen its hold of her. That decision is still there, tangible, as he looks at her now, his eyes following the shape of her wound and her face, coming to a halt at her mouth for a moment. She leans forward, inhales.

"Red templars. Nothing we could not handle."

His face is so open now after everything that’s happened, she thinks not for the first time. His face is so open and at the bottom of his gaze she can see shades of guilt, of shame, of anger and she wants to close it, or close her eyes to it. When she shifts slightly he looks down at her hands that are seeking his; they are still a little cold from walking the grounds earlier, making one of her rounds among the staff.   
  
Their eyes meet again as he wraps his large hands around hers, cupping her fists with his palms, rubbing dry warmth against her knuckles. Then he raises them to his mouth and Evelyn closes her eyes when he lets out a breath, followed by another one and another one until the chill in her bones have been replaced by fire.   
  


He kisses her wrist, soft like a whisper. His fingers curl around hers and he presses his mouth to her palm, the callouses and lines of it under his lips and tongue and she shivers, looking up to find that he’s moved closer, that he’s _watching_  her and she finds that she has so few words left around him these days. As though he’s taken her voice and bled her dry but when his mouth travels over the back of her hand she doesn’t care about that and when her thumb gets caught between his teeth she forgets it entirely.   
  
“My lady,” he says, voice hoarse; it’s a question and a promise and she kisses him then, hard and fast before there’s time for regrets.   
  
  


—-

It is a dark and stormy night and Thom undresses her with more words than she has ever heard him speak before, all of them in his hands that travel from her neck down to her feet, then back up again to let her hair loose. She moans as his blunt nails graze her scalp and he shakes out tangled strands of hair. Leans her head back into his hands to allow him better access to kiss her neck, her throat, the hard flats of her upper chest and the large swell of her breasts. He gives a muffled groan, too, as he frees her of all bindings and clothes and his mouth fills with skin so sensitive that she feels herself get wet, already wet and  _aching_  even without the tip of his tongue around her nipples, along her side, his kisses growing hotter and slower, a hunger consuming them both.   
  
Evelyn curls her fingers into his hair, tugging and guiding and Thom kisses her stomach, his hands working on the last scraps of clothing and then she’s naked where she sits, naked and no longer cold and he pushes her back so her spine is flat against the wall. The hair on his face tickle the inner of her thighs, his fingers kneading, stroking,  _parting_  her legs and she groans loudly now, grinding against the rough fabric of her seat, against his mouth, the rash hair of his beard.   
  
His breathing is thick and ragged, audibly so when he kisses her between her legs and tastes her, all of her desire and impatience on his tongue, balancing on the edge of his teeth. He kisses her thoroughly, fingers gently making paths in the hair around and above while his tongue travels inside. There’s a hard jolt through her body when he reaches the most sensitive spot and she arches her back, almost  _begging_  him, but he withdraws then and she feels his mouth on her legs, going upwards towards her navel and breasts once more but she wants him back where it hurts,  _wants_  him -  
  
She draws a sharp, rugged breath as his mouth closes hot and wet around her nipple and she can feel the pad of his thumb inside, briefly, then more prominently and she yanks at his hair helplessly, mutters a few curses until he’s back further down, licking fire into her. His tongue, firm and warm and steady as she moves her hips in time with his strokes, moves her hands over his head, gentle and furious and desperate because each time she’s close to falling, finally, he taunts her by pausing, withdrawing again, biting tenderly at the insides of her thighs that are sticky now, like the rest of her; she can feel the scent of her cunt in her nostrils when he comes up for air.   
  
Then finally his hands are on her hips, digging into her flesh as he holds her in place and she gasps at the sensation of his lips around that throbbing little spot that is all nerves and blood and  _fuck_ , his tongue then, firm and  _insistent_ and she feels her entire body tense like a bowstring, her feet twitching, heels kicking into him as she comes with a scream.   
  
She lets her hands around his face when he looks up, lets her shaking hands cradle his face because she  _loves_  him and there’s nothing she’s ever been more certain of in her life when he looks at her like this, through thick lashes and with traces of her all over his lips and beard. The corners of his mouth tugs upwards in a grin – self-confident, satisfied, smug – and she pulls him up for a kiss.  
  
She can feel how hard he is through his clothes as he rises to kiss her face to face, can feel the bulge under her hands and hear him moan into her mouth when she teases.   
  
When she begins to remove his jacket and shirt he aids her by shrugging out of it, his mouth never leaving hers. The taste of her still at the back of her tongue as she pushes him back so she can rise to her feet, undo the fastenings of his trousers and undergarments until he’s as naked as she is, skin against skin and his cock against her stomach, her thigh as she motions to move them to her bed. He’s so  _warm_ , she thinks deliriously, always so warm and full of life under all those layers of masks and history and it’s such a waste when they could be doing this. When her hands could play with the greying curls on his chest, his nipples, that soft swell of his belly right above his hips and cock.   
  
He’s on his back in her bed then and she kisses that spot, feverishly, kisses hip bones and knees and arms, wondering if her hands tell as many stories as his do and  _knows_  as her eyes meet his and she can see the grateful adoration in them that they just might.   
  
She takes him in her mouth then and he squirms on the sheets, groaning through gritted teeth when she whirls her tongue over the tip of his cock, down to the base and back up again; he tries to maintain his composure, she can tell, but she takes her time, allowing her fingers to trace winding roads from his belly to his balls, nails barely scraping, barely touching, just enough to make him shudder beneath her.   
  
“Please,” he says and the sound of it fills the room, fills her, sends her near the edge again and she travels up along his body, letting her breasts rub against his wet cock for a moment too long, just enough to make his hands land on her shoulders, as pleading as his voice.   
  
She takes him inside her in one swift move, adjusting herself in his lap and he sits up to kiss her her, his fingers so urgent along her sides that she will have marks there but it doesn’t matter, nothing matters, nothing beyond Thom’s kisses, deep and full and insatiable, as though there can never be enough of her, never enough of  _them_.   
  
He screams as he comes, too – into her skin, his voice muffled, and everything shatter around them then, every wall and boundary in pieces at their feet.   
  
“My lady,” he mumbles - pants - and this time it’s an answer, a prayer.   
  


—-  
  
It is a dark and stormy night and she drifts in and out of sleep when she feels the absence of him in her bed, an empty space by her side. Frowning, she stirs awake and opens her eyes. Outside the wind seems to have calmed somewhat but the ghost-sound of it, the screeching noise, is still there in the corner of reality.   
  
“Thom?”  
  
“I was tending to the fire.” His voice is clear, she wonders if he’s rested at all. “Go back to sleep.”  
  
He stands there, naked in front of the flames and the sight hits her, like a blow to her gut. A silhouette of shadows where everything is darkness or too-bright light. She lifts her blanket, nodding towards the empty side of the bed.  
  
When she closes her eyes again his mouth rests against her shoulder, his hands on the soft flesh of her belly and her back against his heart that beats slow and steady.   
  
“Stay,” she whispers, meaning  _forever_  and he rubs his nose against her earlobe, his voice a mere breath, low and airy. His hands that find hers, fingers twisting around each other, making a tight fabric and spelling out the obvious:  _there’s no running away from this._    
  
“I’m here,” he says and the night goes on, unmarked, around them.   
  



	8. Safe harbours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Isabela/F!Hawke, Isabela/Fenris because I choose Loghain and that broke my heart.

Marian is a language in her. A weight, a voice, a  _truth_.  
  
 _Come back_ ,she says as Isabela runs gracelessly along the filthy streets of Lowtown, dodging behind crates and piles of rubble, daggers warm and sweaty in her palms. The stupid book weighs more than a fat dwarf in her arms – and will be endlessly more useless in a fight – but there’s something about it, dragging her away. She had not  _wanted_  to. Perhaps for the first time in her life she had  _not_  wanted flight.   
  
It’s all Hawke’s fault, really.    
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
“Love can be pretty persistent” _,_  she says and looks at Isabela over her goblet of wine that they’ve stolen from Fenris.   
  
“ _You_ can be pretty persistent,” Isabela mutters into her own goblet.   
  
“It’s a virtue of mine, indeed.” Her face lights up, that tiny wrinkle between her eyebrows appears as she grins, broad and sure. “Your turn now. Tell me one of yours.”  
  
Isabela leans in, her tongue pressed into the space right below Marian’s earlobe where her body goes weak, shivering. “I have no virtues, sweetness.”  
  
Marian’s laugh fills the room.   
  
They’d both rather be respected than cherished, having precious little patience with being adored.   
  
And  _yet_.   
  
The breath catches in Isabela’s throat when Marian’s hands come around her waist and her voice gives that low vibrato as she leans closer. She strokes the fingers of her right hand along Isabela’s throat, touching gold chains and damp skin, threading her way down to her collarbones. Isabela takes her free hand, turning up Hawke’s palm to press her mouth to it and it feels like fire. The way Hawke pretends to fall asleep afterwards and Isabela pretends to leave but remains in the doorway, watching the light from the fireplace paint the messy brown hair bright red and orange.   
  
These are the things between them, unspoken things dismantled in the surprising continuity of it all.   
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
Marian is a language in her. A weight, a voice, a  _wound_.   
  
 _I’m sorry_ , she says as Isabela orders her fifth drink for the evening in a seedy little bar in Jader, not listening to the men in the corner, discussing the downfall of the Grey Wardens. Not hearing their words or their implications, the _nothingness_  of the world they talk about. Not remembering that estate in Hightown or how she used to sneak into the fancy library to add to the stories in Leandra’s old books; Marian’s reaction to it; her face in the dusk every night when Isabela could have stayed but didn’t.   
  
 _Safe harbours, Isabela_ , she says and the wine has gone sour while the sun has gone up and Isabela falls asleep like a child beside Fenris in the narrow bed, reluctant and all at once, like a chord breaking.   
  
And they never speak of it but the following morning there are warm fingers against her cheek, a puff of warm breath along her sweaty neck and Isabela turns, lips parting, and it’s not  _Marian -_  it’s never Marian - but the world is not a still life, it moves in time with them, under them, around them and Fenris’ voice is a low mumble through her body. She cannot say if the reassuring words are for him or for her and perhaps it will have to be this way now.   
  
 _Don’t bet anything you’re not prepared to lose_ , she says and perhaps it’s merely the sounds of morning drowning her out or Fenris’ skin under her palms but Isabela thinks the voice is fainter, thin and brittle like sunlight. Like love. 


End file.
